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Planck Mission Releases Images of Galactic Dust
davecl writes "The Planck satellite has released its first new science images, showing the large scale filamentary structure of cold dust in our own galaxy. This release coincides with the completion of its first survey of the entire sky a couple of weeks ago. There's lots more work to be done, and more observations to be made, before results are ready on the Big Bang, but these images demonstrate Planck's performance and capability. More information is available on the Planck mission blog (which I maintain)."
When talking about things at the galaxy scale, what is considered dust? Is this actual real "dust" of the size that collects on my shelves, grains of sand sized bits, gravel, or something larger?
Best call the Fantastic Four, it sounds like we're about to receive a visit from the Silver Surfer
Summation 2
They consider 1000x892 pixels high resolution? Last I checked, that was high res circa 1995... I'd LOVE to see some of those shots at something at least large enough that my monitor could display naively (2500x1600 minimum), yet alone being able to zoom in...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
If they wanted pictures of dust, they could have just photographed under my bed!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I mean, you'd think the break-out-galactic-pledge department would have her on speed dial or something.
Here is a nice picture of plank:
http://beansie09.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/plank.jpg
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Planck
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
FTA: One puzzle to be solved is why there is similar filamentary structure on both the large and the small scale. "That's a big question," says Tauber.
Interesting that these filaments could probably be modeled using fractals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
Since dust is so difficult to define, maybe they should set a standard for what is and is not dust. Since it came up from this mission they could call it the Plank constant. That isn't used for anything else is it?
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
In Vernor Vinge's fantastic book "A Fire Upon The Deep", he postulates the existence of "Zones" where variations in cosmic constants(?) allow increasingly sophisticated intelligences (and corresponding FTL travel). We (earth) live in the "Slow Zone" where only human level intelligence is possible.
Anyway these pictures, with their galactic scale structures showing Fractal like properties, reminds me of that!
By the way, the book really is awesome (Hugo and Nebula winner) just about the best SF I've read along with Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude". If you're a slashdot geek (and aren't we all?) you'll love his galactic Internet (he's a computer science professor). Oh, and he is credited with the idea of the "Singularity".
I wonder if this dust is high in fat.
This looks like someone simply scanned the cover from a 1970's science fiction paperback. It's beautiful on many levels.
Disclaimer: This is from my personal, anecdotal experience. YMWV...
-Microsoft Security Essentials is the current weapon of choice for people too stingy to pay for protection. It does a good job though, and like has been reiterated many times over, it's pretty light on system resources, it doesn't nag unless you have a virus (though it will give you a "yellow signal" if your Windows Update patches aren't current), and it's straightforward in the event the end user actually has to do anything in it.
-Avast is my second choice. In my experience, Avast (at least the 4.8 version) is the only antivirus I know of that has a custom installer that will function properly in safe mode. In the event that the system is already hosed, if you can get into safe mode, you'll probably be able to install Avast (along with their definition updates that also come as a standalone installer if Safe Mode w/Networking doesn't work) and do a boot-time scan to get you back up and running. I haven't played much with version 5, but both 4.8 and 5 seem to have their pros and cons - 4.8 is lighter, but 5 gives a more polished user experience. If you go for this one, try each version. The first-party Avast site offers both for now, but filehippo.com has an archive of older versions if Avast decides to only offer 5 at some point in the near future and remove the 4.8 link.
-Avira is handy to have, and is shipped on the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (www.ubcd4win.com). In that context it works really well, but IMO an antivirus shouldn't be naggy, because then users start to become conditioned to ignore it, and that's something that will NEVER be desirable. As a repair scanner on the UBCD where you can run your scan and reboot, great. There's no reason to have your family get nagged by the virus scanner.
-AVG is almost the de facto standard in freeware antivirus apps; it's the rare week that it's *not* #1 on the download.com download list (ironically enough, Limewire tends to be #2). I used to think it was alright, and did use it for a while, but it started to get a bit "heavy" on the install side, a bit naggy with the "special upgrade offers", and started slipping on the detection/removal rates.
While this is about freeware antiviruses, there's a few noteworthy for-pay applications that I feel are at least worth taking a look at:
-NOD32 is tiny (v.2.7 was written in assembler and has a 12MB installer; even the x64 version is only 35MB). It's fast. Virtually every review I've read has had its detection rates among the highest available. In my experience, that holds extremely true; not one of my friends and/or family who have coughed up for NOD32 have ended up infected without hitting the 'ignore' button. For $40/year (10% discount for typing "LEO22" at checkout; 2-year and multilicense discounts as well), it is really protection worth paying for. Also, v.4.0 includes a widget to burn a bootable CD that will update itself and scan for viruses on the host machine without booting into Windows. That's a really handy feature. If you're really cramped on system resources, the 2.7 version is also available from FileHippo and will be supported through 2012. Amazingly enough, it will install on anything from Windows 95 to Windows 7 x64.
-Acronis just released a security suite called Backup&Security in conjunction with BitDefender. It's not as light as NOD32 (in fact, it's among the heavier apps available and thus not for the faint of RAM), but I've never seen a more full-featured antivirus. Antivirus, Antispam, firewall, parental controls, IM protection, game mode, all the features of Acronis True Image Home for scheduled backups and disk imaging, centralized management across the home LAN, 5GB of online backup, and three licenses for $70. If there are multiple machines in the same household that need to be secured and have enough RAM to handle it, it's seriously worth a look.
Also, as far as on-demand scanning goes, the freeware Combofix app is sheer amazingness. It's not a comprehensive virus/malware scanner,